15 Spanish Saints and the Painters Who Gave Them Their Faces
Spain has given the Church more canonised saints than almost any other nation, and it did something rarer still: it…
Teresa of Avila: The Mystic Who Was Also a Builder
Everyone knows the face Bernini gave her: head fallen back, mouth open, a marble nun undone by an angel with…
Francis Xavier: The Missionary Whose Body Refused to Decay
In February 1553 a burial party on a Chinese island dug up a crate they had packed with quicklime ten…
John of the Cross: The Poet Who Wrote His Masterpiece in a Prison Cell
On the night of 2 December 1577 a group of Carmelite friars broke into a small house in Avila and…
Ignatius of Loyola: The Cannonball That Made a Saint
On 20 May 1521 a cannonball came through the wall of the citadel at Pamplona, passed between Inigo de Loyola’s…